


chicago is so two years ago

by Fireblasts



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M, Podfic Available, Post-Canon, Soul Bond, dogowner fic gives me life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-25
Updated: 2014-01-25
Packaged: 2018-01-10 00:05:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1152424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fireblasts/pseuds/Fireblasts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Where you zig, baby, I will zag.</p><p>Or: the one where Kaner and Tazer realize they named their dogs after each other, so they're kind of screwed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	chicago is so two years ago

**Author's Note:**

> This was entirely spawned from a dream I had where I got a dog and named it Kaner and we went for a walk in the park. So then Tazer became me and things got more complicated. It takes place after an unspecified season, canonically after the 2013 Stanley Cup win.
> 
> The title of this fic comes from a Fall Out Boy song off their first album (I unabashedly try to be pop-punk as much as possible). A playlist for this fic can be found [here](http://8tracks.com/fireblasts/dirty-mind-tricks). Tracklist [here](http://i.imgur.com/PUewuhK.png)!

They don’t know it at all, but it actually starts five months after they go their separate ways, Johnny home in Winnipeg and Patrick settled back into the Buffalo lifestyle. They wind up at different dog shelters at the exact same time on the exact same day and, without having any particular reason to do so except for feeling a little bit lonely, they both adopt a dog.

Johnny’s not sure why he picks a dog that’s so much more playful than he is and Patrick doesn’t exactly know why he goes home with a dog whose stoic glance rivals a statue’s and who only eats healthy dog food, but. It makes for a good excuse to name their dogs after each other, though they would never ever mention it.

Hockey was over—they get their career-ending injuries during the same game (Sidney Crosby underestimates his own strength; Kaner learns that Malkin doesn’t take well to him pushing Crosby around after hurting Tazer). Things had gone a little beyond buddyfucking sans feeling, which made keeping in touch after that a bit weird. It was easier this way, with dogs to keep them company instead of each other.

Of course, fuck that. The universe had much more exciting plans in store.

/

Kaner’s a fucking golden retriever, so Johnny’s not exactly sure _how_ he managed to get lost. But he doesn’t seem to be around anywhere, so. There’s that.

Johnny spends five minutes searching his backyard for any signs of burrowing under the fence or dognapping before he comes across the culprit in the case of the escaping dog: his gate has a clasp problem and happens to swing open whenever something large-dog-sized bumps his head against it from the right side. Which—excellent, because now he’s not only gotta find his dog, but also see to that at some point in the near future.

Which is how he ends up at his neighbor’s house—Paula, the one who always acts like she has no idea that he used to be famous (like there aren’t things named after him). He appreciates that. “Hey,” he says when she answers the door. “So my dog kind of got out of my backyard within the last fifteen minutes, I guess? I don’t suppose you’ve seen him.”

“Your golden?” Paula asks, frowning. “No, I haven’t seen him on the street. Here, let me help you look for him.” She’s out of the doorway with a promise to just be a moment, she needs her keys, before Johnny can tell her it’s no big deal and that he can find his dog on his own.

So—“What’s your dog’s name? I’ll circle around the street in my car calling for him.” And Johnny’s got no viable lying options because Kaner doesn’t fucking _answer_ to anything else. He knew this day would come eventually.

“Kaner,” he grunts out, avoiding eye contact and hoping Paula’s feeling generous enough not to bring it up. Or that she actually doesn’t know who he is, and that’s why she always acts like she doesn’t.

“You named your dog after your ex-teammate?” She, of course, asks, raising an eyebrow. “That’s kind of cute.”

No tremendous bolt of lightning suddenly comes to strike him down on the spot, so he just kind of draws in a breath and shrugs. “Patrick and I are still close,” he lies. “We got knocked out of the NHL during the same hour of hockey. It’s just a name.”

She sees right through it. “You know, he told Deadspin a few months ago that you two haven’t spoken in almost a year and a half. Haven’t you only had your dog just over a year now?”

He should’ve fucking gone to his other neighbor—at least Barry would’ve been more interested in talking to him about hockey than making him feel like the whole world could figure out he and Patrick had been a thing for a while. He doesn’t even know why Deadspin would’ve been in touch with Patrick—what’s he even doing with his life now? Johnny’s suddenly conscious of how long it’s been. He fidgets on her doorstep.

“Yeah, okay. So I need to go find my dog now.”

She shrugs. “I’ll get in my car and circle the neighborhood,” she says again, like she can’t pick up on the hint that Johnny’s uncomfortable now. “You go look in the park. You walk him there a lot, don’t you?”

Johnny wants to frown, but he’s not about to turn down the help. “Uh, let me write my number on your arm or something so you can call me if you find him.” Paula laughs and pulls out her phone instead, having Johnny type it into her contacts. “My mom says I still have my right to privacy, so if you give out my number or tell anyone what you think you know about why I’ve got a dog named after Patrick Kane, I think I can sue for damages.” He sounds like he’s fucking fourteen saying that and not even being sure about it, but it’s not like he’s got much dignity left to lose in front of Paula without getting naked.

“Your parents know you named your dog after your teammate?” She asks, which causes Johnny to look away, embarrassed. “No worries,” she adds, waving a hand. “I’ll go back to pretending that your hockey career didn’t mean the world to my brother as soon as we find Kaner,” she can’t help grinning a little bit.

Johnny’s picked up enough about Paula to know that her brother works overseas in London and is married now, and he nods. “Next time, uh Greg right?” She nods. “Next time Greg’s in town for holiday I’ll say hi then. Thanks.”

She shoos him off her doorstep and tells him to get going to the park, so he turns on his heel and gets in his own car and takes off in the opposite direction that Paula does.

He gets _extremely_ lucky that there aren’t many people at the park, because it means he can freely call out “Kaner!” every once in a while without a mob of people suddenly looking at him and wondering why he’d be calling for an old teammate. It takes two passes through the park, checking in bushes and keeping an eye out for flashes of yellow in the distance, before his phone starts ringing.

“Paula?” He asks, unrecognized number and all.

“Impressive deductive skills,” she says, and he can hear panting in the background. “I found your dog trying to go for a swim in a kiddie pool in Mrs. Neumann’s backyard. Turns out he responds to ‘Toews’ too, so I think your little secret's still safe.”

She doesn’t say anything about it, but he’s pretty sure she’s mentally laughing at him for the number of times he must’ve called his dog ‘Kaner Toews’ and given him a stern talking to in order for Kaner to think it was part of his name. Maybe he’s just thinking too much about what he’s going to do as soon as he gets Kaner home. He realizes he hasn’t responded to the news yet—“Oh, awesome. Uh, meet you back at your place then? Thanks for the help.”

“No problem, nineteen,” she says, hanging up before Johnny has a chance to respond.

/

After politely turning down an invitation to come in and have coffee, which Paula doesn’t seem too surprised by, Johnny hauls Kaner back to his house and realizes he’s going to have to keep him inside most of the time, unless he can be there to watch him when he’s outside. He makes a call to a locksmith who can’t promise him anything earlier than Tuesday, four days from now, so Johnny accepts it knowing that he’ll just have to keep Kaner locked inside when he’s out on Monday.

He's got a job working for the local recreation center, teaching a kids hockey class in the winter and acting as a ‘fitness role model’ during the summer. It keeps him occupied without pushing his still slightly unsteady leg too hard, and being paid not to let go of the past works well enough for Johnny.

It’s not like he doesn’t want to—the past just never seems to let him. Which is how, about twenty minutes after he gets home with Kaner, he gets a phone call that he answers without bothering to check who was calling and ends up on the line with Patrick.

“You picked up fast,” Patrick says, like it’s the first thing anybody says to anyone they haven’t spoken to in eighteen months. He doesn’t even sound like it throws him off his game at all—knowing Patrick, he probably didn’t even plan out what he was going to say when he called.

Johnny almost hangs up just as fast, if only to prove a point, but his hands won’t let him. “Didn’t check who was calling,” he says—because _it’s true_ and he can’t let Patrick think he’s desperate to talk to him.

“Yeah,” Patrick says, like he understands exactly what Johnny means by that. “Listen, this is weird so I’m not gonna dance around it. Were you talking about me a lot today or something?”

Well technically Johnny talks about Kaner every day. And he had talked about Patrick briefly with Paula but—“Uh, no? I don’t really—do you talk about me a lot? I heard about that Deadspin thing.”

“Don’t ask,” Patrick says quickly. “Anyway, that’s cool then.” He sounds like he’s ready to hang up.

“Are you going to tell me why you called me out of nowhere to ask if I was talking about you?”

“I kept hearing your voice all day.” Patrick says it pretty fucking nonchalantly, considering how weird of a sentence that comes across as. “Not like, your voice instead of mine. I just kept hearing you say my name over and over, like you were looking for me or something.”

Johnny swallows on the other end of the line when he feels his stomach tighten. “You kept hearing me say ‘Patrick?’”

Patrick’s silent for a moment. “No, dude. Kaner.”

Johnny glances at his dog and vividly remembers the number of times he _did_ call out for Kaner today, like he was looking for something—looking for Kaner. But Kaner the golden retriever, not Kaner the Patrick-person. He’s not sure what to think of that—some of his thoughts getting lost in the atmosphere and bounced back down to Patrick? Not possible, but it doesn’t seem like Patrick’s calling him to make fun of him, like Paula already spilled the beans to every news station in North America and now he knows all about his dog.

“You miss me? You think that’s why you were hearing my voice?” Johnny asks, half to deflect and half because he wants to know.

“I miss hockey,” Patrick admits. That’s probably just as good as admitting he misses Johnny too, right? Or maybe he just misses the full functionality of his wrist. Johnny isn’t sure.

“Me too,” Johnny says finally. This conversation can’t go on much longer or Kaner the golden retriever will start whining that Johnny’s paying too much attention to Patrick, and then Patrick will hear it and ask when he got a dog. That just spells out disaster. “I’ll probably see you around sometime then, Pat.”

Patrick takes a moment longer to respond than Johnny would’ve expected—like he was thinking of adding something to the conversation. “You never know.” And then he’s hung up and Johnny’s left with the dial tone and Kaner bumping his nose into his hand, looking to be scratched.

He feeds Kaner and tries not to think too much about the phone call for the rest of the evening, choosing instead to lie on his bed and do absolutely anything but think. This largely ends up being watching mindless television and jerking off once—but he finds it difficult not to think about Patrick if he just lets himself think about hot people, so he watches straight porn for the first time in quite a while and takes too long to finish.

So he’s just lying there in bed when he hears, crystal clear, Patrick’s voice. _Toothpaste?_ Johnny blinks several times, wondering if he maybe masturbated a bit too long. He waits for a moment to hear if the voice comes back but it doesn’t, so he shrugs it off as his subconscious telling him to brush his teeth. He’d probably heard it in Patrick’s voice because they’d talked on the phone earlier.

He hears _Where’s my left dress shoe?_ the moment he steps into the bathroom to brush his teeth, and he stops cold. There’s no way his subconscious would have him wondering about dress shoes he hasn’t worn in months. Plus—that was definitely Patrick’s voice again.

Johnny leans against the counter in his bathroom and tries to get the voice to say something else. He thinks random thoughts and tries to make them sound like Patrick, but none of them do. He waits for at least ten minutes, just poised in random places of the bathroom trying to get another thought, before he decides to brush his teeth anyway and splashes his face with several handfuls of water.

It’s almost ten and, well, it’s Friday so it’s not like he has to get up tomorrow, but he feels like climbing into bed anyway. The fact that it’s Friday actually calms him down a little bit, since he can practically guarantee that Patrick would be out drinking in a bar instead of hunting around his apartment for toothpaste and dress shoes.

But his heart seems to pick up in tempo all of a sudden, and he feels uneasy. Something seems weird—he feels that he should be thinking about something incredibly uncomfortable to justify this feeling, but all that he’s doing is watching trashy television. His stomach flips and he has to take a huge breath and put his hand to his head to make sure he hasn’t just started running a fever. So it probably shouldn’t be too surprising when he’s not—because then comes Patrick’s voice again, frustrated but still incredibly clear.

_Why the fuck does Erica have to be getting married in Winnipeg of all places?_

/

He gets Erica’s number from his mother, whom it turns out knew all along that she was getting married. It’s to some guy, Donovan, who’s local to the area and has too many relatives to fly all of them to Buffalo. His mother lets it slip that she thinks Patrick is paying for most of it. Also, apparently Winnipeg is wonderful for spring weddings if he was ever thinking about settling down or getting back in touch with Patrick. The way his mom intertwines those two sentences makes Johnny's stomach twist. He kind of avoids filing that tidbit of information away.

The wedding turns out to be literally next Friday, and his parents are going. He doesn’t know how they managed to keep that from him for all this time. Clearly he should go around asking his mother if she knows any secrets about the Kane family more often.

Erica picks up on the second ring, and must have gotten his number from Patrick at some point because she says “Hello Jonathan!” like there’s nothing obscure about the situation at all.

“Patrick didn’t tell me you were getting married,” he says after a moment.

Erica hums thoughtfully on the other end. “That’s funny. Patrick didn’t tell me you two were on speaking terms again.”

Since when had they not been on speaking terms? They hadn’t been speaking but that was—oh, right, because of the sex. Maybe they hadn’t been on speaking terms and Johnny just didn’t get it. But then why would Patrick have called him last night? Or talked about him on Deadspin?

“Patrick and I never fell out with each other,” he says. “And he called me last night, so I guess we are. On speaking terms.”

If she has any curiosity about the phone call, she doesn’t show it. “Are you coming to the wedding then? I mean your parents are, and you’re already in town. You may as well.”

“Isn’t it a bit late to reorganize seating charts and add guests just for me? It’s in less than a week.”

She sounds like she’s waving her hand in the air on the other end of the phone. “I know when my own wedding is, Johnny. Anyway, Patrick still hasn’t figured out who his plus-one is supposed to be, and I was starting to worry I was going to have to have him find a hooker to bring along if you two didn’t start talking again.”

Johnny tries to ignore that his mother must be talking to Erica _way_ too much. “He’s not seeing anyone?”

“Hasn’t been for a while,” she says—and he knows exactly what it implies. Patrick was probably just as bad at keeping his secrets from his family as Johnny was. “Are you interested in being his date to my Wonderful Winnipeg Wedding?”

“Date probably isn’t the best term for it,” he says.

“Come off it, Johnny,” Erica groans. “He still has a picture of the two of you holding the Stanley Cup in his wallet. And he’s had to change wallets about four times in the last year, so don’t try telling me it isn’t there for a reason.”

“Why are _you_ the one asking me to be his dinner partner?”

“Because my brother is more stubborn than you would think,” she says. “Patty spent all last night packing,” Johnny feels like he should’ve been able to guess that, “and I’m not talking about packing for the wedding weekend. Mom says he must have enough clothes to stay in Winnipeg for two whole weeks.”

Johnny thinks that’s weird, because he definitely heard Patrick griping about having to be anywhere near him. He’s still not sure on the logistics of how that works—or how Patrick can apparently hear him call out to his dog—so maybe it’s a little faulty. Maybe Patrick does want to be in Winnipeg. Maybe Johnny was right when he guessed that Patrick missed more about hockey than just the full use of his injured wrist.

“Anyway,” Erica says, since Johnny’s too caught up in his thoughts to have replied to her, “don’t be a shit to him when you see him at the wedding, please. And come looking nice, of course, but you clean up well so I’m less worried about you than I am him. Your parents already got me a wedding present so don’t worry about that.”

“Is Patrick paying for all of this?” He asks, because thinking of Patrick apparently makes him lose all sense of tact.

“Your mother has been wanting to ask that for the past three months,” Erica laughs. “Patty’s not paying for everything, but he’s doing more for me than he needs to. I think he’s worried his bachelor status is going to haunt him forever now, so seriously, be nice to him.”

“Your brother and I weren’t together,” he feels like he should clarify.

“Yeah, alright,” Erica says. “Say—random question, but did you get a pet or anything since hockey ended?”

That _is_ a random question, but it’s not like Johnny didn’t already prepare a list of names to get Kaner to start responding to in case he ever gets lost again, so he’s got cover if Erica asks for his dog’s name. “Yeah. I got a dog about a year ago. A golden retriever.”

Erica hums again, and sounds like she just wrote that information down. “That’s cool. I bet he’s a good companion. Okay, Johnny! I gotta go. See you in six days. Patrick gets into town on Monday if you’re interested in seeing him.”

She hangs up before he can decide if he wants to tell her that he is or isn’t interested in seeing Patrick before the wedding.

/

He can’t see Patrick on Monday at least, because he’s got to go inspire old people to stay in shape at the gym. He does, however, shoot Patrick a text that basically boils down to _Hey. I know about the wedding. Your sister strong-armed me into being your date to it. Sorry. We should talk before then._

Patrick must not like texting that much these days, because Johnny gets a phone call three hours after he texts him that opens with “Just got off the plane. So go. This is us talking.”

Johnny has a lot of things he wants to say—the foremost of them being ‘Why the fuck can I hear some of your thoughts sometimes?’ but that also hasn’t happened to him since Friday and if Patrick’s heard any more of his thoughts since then he hasn’t mentioned it, so he lets that question slide. “Why didn’t you tell me Erica was getting married or that you’d be in town?”

“Because you’d make a big deal of it?”

“We haven’t seen each other in eighteen months, Pat.”

“I’m sure you weren’t that lonely. Erica told me you got a dog.”

“Yeah, a golden retriever.”

“I have a dog too,” Patrick says suddenly. “My neighbor’s looking after him while I’m gone. While I’m here.”

“For two weeks?”

Patrick’s silent for a moment. “Yeah. I thought I’d do some sightseeing.”

Johnny doesn’t get a chance to respond for a moment, because suddenly Patrick’s voice comes rushing into his head. _Idiot! Worst excuse ever! Johnny lives here, he knows there's not really—_ "Anything to see here.” That seems to shut the voice up, but now Johnny’s got a killer headache and has no fucking idea why that keeps happening. The other end of the line is so quiet that Johnny thinks Patrick might’ve lost his signal, so: “Patrick?”

“Did you just finish my sentence?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I heard you telling Erica that we weren’t together. Had never been together.”

“She told you I said that?”

“No,” Patrick says. “I heard it in my head, like I heard you yelling my name. You can hear me sometimes too, can’t you?”

Well this was about as easy as this conversation was ever going to come up. “I don’t know what’s going on,” Johnny admits. “But yeah. I heard you packing. That’s how I found out about the wedding.”

“And now you’re my date.”

“Now I’m your date, yeah.”

Johnny hears Patrick shuffle the phone to his other hand and grumble a little bit. “Let’s try to keep this mind-reading thing as non-invasive as possible.”

“I don’t think we can control it.”

“We’ll get to practice, then,” Patrick says. “I’m here for two weeks after all. I’ll see you on Thursday for the dress rehearsal. Look cute.”

“Sure,” Johnny says before he realizes what Patrick’s even said, but by then he’s hung up on him.

/

The dress rehearsal goes well in that Patrick looks _really, really good_ and Johnny gets to spend five hours ghosting him like they never dropped out of sync. “Have you heard any of my thoughts recently?” Johnny asks about halfway through, when they’ve stopped talking to people and are sitting at their own table.

Patrick looks at him a little funny, like maybe he heard that one thought Johnny had when he first saw Patrick—the _I can’t believe I’ve fucked Patrick before, holy shit he looks so hot right now_ one. But then his expression goes back to neutral and he shrugs. “No. But don’t worry about that right now. You’ll ruin the moment.”

“It’s a dress rehearsal,” Johnny points out. “You said we were going to practice.”

“Practice how?” Patrick asks. “As far as both of us know, it happens at random—” _I’m so nervous right now_ comes into Patrick’s head through Johnny’s voice, “but I guess it happens more when we’re together or talking about it. Why are you nervous?”

“You heard that one?”

“Yeah.” They both go silent for a moment before Patrick nudges Johnny’s leg under the table. “Why’re you nervous?”

“You look hot,” Johnny whispers. “Really, really hot.”

“You don’t look so bad yourself,” Patrick says, one eyebrow arched.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I dunno,” Patrick shrugs. “Just—that sounded more like something I would say, not you.”

Johnny frowns. “You don’t think—”

“We sometimes read each other’s minds,” Patrick says. “I don’t really know what to think.”

Johnny nods, then gets the urge to lick his lips. “Are we gonna—”

“My sister’s wedding first, figuring out this mind reading thing second, and then glorious reunion sex last, Toews.”

“Yes, Captain,” Johnny mocks, and for a few seconds afterward both of them look uncomfortable.

/

The wedding goes even better than the dress rehearsal in that Erica gets married—very exciting, very cute—and Patrick still looks unbelievably hot. Otherwise, it’s mostly a disaster.

It starts before the actual reception, when they’re on opposite ends of the room from each other, Patrick having his picture taken with his family, Erica in her wedding dress, and Johnny sitting next to his parents, watching him. Erica demanded pictures of Johnny and Patrick together after the family shots, and what the bride wants the bride gets. _I wonder if Erica told Johnny about the picture of us in my wallet_ , Johnny suddenly hears.

His brain kind of automatically comes up with _Yeah she did. That’s cute, Pat_ and he doesn’t think anything of it until Patrick’s face twists away from the camera to stare directly at him, and his mouth is kind of open. _Oh shit, did you hear that? Can you hear this?_

 _This is not even happening_ , Patrick sends back, turning back to look at the camera when Erica pulls at his arm and admonishes him for looking away. _There’s no fucking way we’re communicating like this right now._

Johnny tries to think back a _Well I guess it is fucking happening_ at Patrick, but then Patrick doesn’t give any indication that he got that one, nor does he send one back. After a few more pictures, he glances over at Johnny and mouths something that looks like ‘did it stop?’ and Johnny just shrugs, because he guesses it did.

The pictures they take together are almost too gay, but they pretty much simultaneously wrap an arm around each other’s backs during the serious photos. Erica calls for a goofy shot, and no one says anything about how it almost looks like they had practiced it when Johnny bends his legs and Patrick hops onto his back. They don’t even stop to consider that Johnny’s leg still isn’t perfect and the weight is probably a bit unsafe, but for some reason it’s not bothering him at all. His right wrist twitches a little bit as he’s holding Pat, and he can feel Patrick’s left leg quivering against him slightly, which is a little fucking abnormal.

“Are we injury trading now?” Johnny asks after the photos, because it’s not like it’s that much weirder than mind reading.

“If there’s any justice in this world, I am _not_ turning into you.”

“Do you think we’re gonna swap bodies like in _Freaky Friday_?”

Patrick eyes him for a moment. “Have you even seen _Freaky Friday_ or is that something from me spilling over?”

Johnny shrugs. “We were both teenagers once.”

They resolve not to push it further than that and everything seems to go okay from there until the moment Erica stops walking down the aisle and their officiant asks for anyone with an objection to the marriage to speak now or forever hold their peace. After a brief image of Taylor Swift’s _Speak Now_ album cover flashes into his mind, he hears Patrick say _Donovan’s such a fucking sleaze._

Johnny blinks for a moment and glances over at Patrick, who’s looking at him expectantly. So— _Did you send that to me on purpose? Can we do that now?_

After a moment: _I guess? It worked._ No one spoke up, so Erica’s slipping the ring onto Donovan’s finger and Patrick’s trying too hard not to scowl the entire time.

_Oh. That’s… interesting. Why do you think Donovan’s a sleaze?_

_He was a total asshole at the stag party._

Johnny hadn’t been there—Patrick had asked him not to come in case they got too drunk. _You sure he wasn’t just treating you like a brother-in-law?_

_He asked if I’d suck his dick for a beer, said he’d seen all my Deadspin stuff and thinks I’m a total fucking wreck._

Johnny doesn’t hide the scowl nearly as well as Patrick does. _Why didn’t you tell Erica?_

The connection either goes volatile at that point or Patrick doesn’t want to respond, because afterwards there’s silence and then everyone’s standing up to cheer and clap for the newlyweds.

/

A reverberating, mental _Entertain me_ wakes Johnny up at nine in the morning the day after the wedding, and he’s not sure what’s more annoying—that he’s still not a morning person, or that Patrick is somehow better at this telepathic communication than he is. At least he seems to be able to run with it for a while whenever Patrick initiates.

 _Entertain yourself_ , he sends back. _You’re the one who decided to stay here for so fucking long._

_Yeah because I wanted to see you, asshole. I thought that was pretty obvious considering you heard me say that sightseeing was a shitty excuse._

Johnny groans, which earns him a _Stop fucking groaning like you don’t want to see me_ from Patrick.

_Groaning isn’t even a thought, how did you hear that? How are you starting these conversations? Are you going to clue me in on this?_

_Have you even been trying to start one? It doesn’t always work for me. I’ve been trying to get your attention for the past hour._

Johnny tries to send something back, but there’s something fuzzy in his head when he does and he just knows it doesn’t go through, so he calls Patrick instead.

“Did it drop?” Patrick asks as soon as he picks up the phone.

“Yeah. It seems like we can only do it for a minute or so.”

“So what’s on our agenda for today?” Patrick asks, like he’s not even interested in figuring out what makes their connection work. “Theme park? Museum? Boring day at home?”

“I’ll take you to a bar tonight and buy all of your drinks if you let me go back to bed.”

“You’re a catch,” Patrick says, and Johnny gets a vision of him grinning in his head, which is kind of cute when he thinks about it. “See you tonight then.”

Johnny gets to sleep for another hour before Patrick’s back in his head, sounding kind of frantic. He ends up having to give him directions from the Winnipeg Convention Center to the Manitoba Museum because Patrick’s apparently not capable enough to figure it out. The connection doesn’t seem much more stable because he keeps having to repeatedly send directions when Patrick misses them, but they already seem to be able to initiate it more frequently.

 _They’re literally ten minutes away from each other_ , Johnny comments, which just earns him a picture of Patrick flipping him off invading his head. _How do you keep doing that? Sending pictures?_

 _They’re just thoughts in images,_ Patrick sends back like it’s so fucking obvious. _They’re actually easier to send than regular thoughts, I think?_

Johnny tries to send several different thoughts at Patrick before he gets a response—Patrick sends a _Probably accurate_ to a picture of him passed out at a bar that night, Johnny rolling his eyes at him from the side. That makes Johnny laugh, and a picture of him laughing must send to Patrick automatically, because he gets back a _Don’t laugh at me_ and a picture of Patrick frowning like a little kid.

It’s a little endearing. Kaner paws over to his bed and hops up on top of Johnny.

/

At first, Johnny’s glad the bar they go to isn’t that crowded because it means he can keep an eye on Patrick’s alcohol consumption. He doesn’t really have to though, because things start going haywire when they’re only on their second drink together. So far they haven’t heard any stray thoughts—or Johnny hasn’t at least, and if Patrick has he’s keeping quiet about them—and there’s no real need to try and initiate a mental contact since they’re sitting right next to each other.

Patrick’s looking at him like he’s got something on his mind that isn’t cooperating in sending to Johnny. “Are you trying to send me something or do you just like giving me weird looks?”

Patrick frowns slightly but dodges the question. “Hey, why don’t you call me Kaner anymore?”

And then the dam bursts, because the name causes about forty images to come into his head, split between Kaner the Patrick-person and Kaner the golden retriever, and they all zip by so quickly that he has no time to see if any of them get lost in the stream and make their way to Patrick. Evidently some do, because when Johnny opens his mouth to respond, Patrick’s trying to bite back a laugh.

“You did not,” he says, corners of his mouth twisting up.

“I didn’t what?”

“You named your dog after me? I can’t deal with you, Toews.”

“It’s just a name—” he starts, but then Patrick holds a hand up and starts looking like he’s concentrating again, trying to get something to go to Johnny in return.

It fades in slowly at first, a picture of some breed of dog Johnny doesn’t recognize— _Finnish Lapphund, easy to train, intelligent_ flashes across the picture—sitting next to Patrick on a couch in his apartment. The dog starts moving around on the couch and settles on top of Patrick, and by that point the picture is clear enough that Johnny can see that the dog has a fucking _Sabres jersey_ custom made for it.

The view of the picture switches to the back, so Johnny can see the back of Patrick’s head as he watches a Sabres game on his television, and then starts angling downward, moving above Patrick and looking down on him and his dog.

Which is when Johnny notices that the jersey that Patrick’s dog is wearing has ‘TAZER 19’ on the back instead of the name of any fucking Sabres player ever.

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

“I don’t think this mind-reading thing has reached the point where I could make up an entire group of images to send to you.”

“This can’t be happening. There’s no way we named our dogs after each other.”

“Erica is going to flip her shit when she finds out about this. She _told me_ that if I was desperate enough to name my dog after you, then you might’ve done the same.”

“When did you get him?” Johnny asks, remembering that Erica had sounded like she’d written the details on his dog down when he had told her.

“Last April,” Patrick says. “So a year ago last month.”

“Fuck,” Johnny groans. “Please don’t tell me—the sixteenth?”

Patrick looks like he’s about to throw his beer on the ground and fall over laughing. “Yeah. Fucking hell.”

“This is so fucking obscure,” Johnny says.

“What do you think it means?”

“That I will never fucking escape you, Patrick Kane.”

“Good,” Patrick grins. “Now take me home.”

“You wanna head back to your hotel already?”

Patrick eyes him briefly and then a picture of the two of them in front of Patrick’s apartment pops into Johnny’s mind. “I don’t know what your house looks like,” he admits, “so I had to improvise.”

“You want to go to my place?” Johnny says carefully, remembering exactly where Patrick had said ‘glorious reunion sex’ fell on their list of things to do, and they hadn’t exactly figured out what was going on with their mental bond.

“You’re going to deprive me of meeting my canine counterpart?”

“Oh,” Johnny tries not to sound overtly disappointed. “I mean, you can if you want?”

“Do you know how expensive Finnish Lapphunds are to breed? And I just found one in an animal shelter? Tazer is practically just a furrier you who walks on four legs. I was pretty much _fated_ to adopt him. I need to see how your Kaner holds a candle to the real deal.”

“Kaner’s cuter than you,” Johnny says with a shrug. “But he’s also too excitable in the mornings, needy, and shorter than most golden retrievers, so I guess you’ve got a few similarities.”

Patrick definitely comes close to pouring his beer down the back of Johnny’s shirt.

/

Kaner doesn’t really know what to think of Patrick when he shows up at the house with Johnny. On one paw, he’s got his hands all over Johnny and keeps pressing their faces together, and Johnny seems to like it. But on another paw, he smells like another dog. Which is absolutely unforgivable—Johnny doesn’t need the influence of another dog in his life. Kaner bumps his wet nose into Johnny’s calf several times before sitting and looking up, begging for confirmation that he is the only dog Johnny needs.

“Hey boy,” Johnny pulls away from Patrick to bend down and scratch behind Kaner’s ears. Patrick grins when a multitude of images of Johnny and Kaner curled up together flashes through his head, so he takes a seat on the floor of Johnny’s living room and starts scratching Kaner’s back. Kaner’s pretty sure this is a sign of Patrick’s submission to him as a more important dog than whatever dog he smells of, so he pushes his way over Patrick’s legs until he’s stretched out in his lap.

“Your dog likes me more than you,” Patrick says, which earns him a tail wag from Kaner and a sarcastic, mental _Sure he does_ from Johnny.

“You two are practically the same entity,” Johnny says, sitting down next to Patrick. He uses one hand to scratch Kaner’s head and slings the other around Patrick’s back. “I’m not offended.”

“Good,” Patrick says, and they spend twenty minutes rolling around on the floor with Kaner before deciding to boot up Mario Kart. They end up having to play team races since every time Johnny prepares to throw a red shell at Patrick, swarms of images of Patrick’s pouty face invade his head and he ends up distractedly swerving off the course.

/

Patrick checks out of his hotel early the next morning and spends the remainder of the week he still has in Winnipeg rooming with Johnny. It doesn’t get _that_ gay, but they make out a lot and there’s at least two times when they’re definitely on the same let’s-have-sex-right-now wavelength even though they don’t act on it. If anything, they just start regulating themselves even more around each other—simultaneous waking up, Johnny getting up to get Patrick a drink even when he hasn’t asked for one, and the one time Johnny came home from working at the rec center to find that Patrick had done the laundry he’d been meaning to do. Patrick had just shrugged and told him that his mind practically forced him to do it.

So when Patrick leaves Winnipeg the following Monday to return to Buffalo, both of them feel a little bit like they’re dealing with a phantom limb. It happens more than once that one of them will take a drink of water and hear the other’s _I’m thirsty_ thought pop into their head and try to pass the drink to their side, only to have it fall to ground because no one was actually there to take it.

The bond kind of revolts to them having been so close and now so far by just getting stronger, and after about four days apart Patrick and Johnny have pretty much each and every thought getting flung back and forth between them. This makes them particularly aware of some things—such as the fact that Patrick’s been mentally referring to Johnny as his ‘other half’ since the bond started, and that Johnny dreams about Patrick naked _a lot._

“We need to fuck,” Johnny calls Patrick up after one such naked dream, because even though mental communication is easier, it often ends with messages getting lost in a wave of other thoughts. For example, Johnny’s mind is suddenly flooded with _Hell fucking yeah_ ’s and images of them naked in alternating positions before Patrick’s actual response to the conversation rings through.

“You wanna have phone sex?”

“No,” Johnny says, and they relay exasperated facial expressions to each other. “I need to fuck you.”

“What if it makes this go away?” It seems like a joking question, but Johnny can see the tinge of fear Patrick’s thoughts have to them.

“I’m pretty sure sex isn’t going to dissolve our freaky mind-share,” Johnny says, and he’s trying his best to be comforting so Patrick only laughs at him a little bit when he ends up transmitting pictures of warm milk and ice cream.

“When can you be here?”

“Next flight out,” Johnny promises, and Patrick barely has time to register his own thoughts when an image of Johnny pressing him up against the wall and kissing him completely overruns his mind.

/

“Your boyfriend asked me to watch his dog,” Erica calls Patrick three hours later. Patrick relays the message to Johnny, airborne en route to Buffalo, who sends back a dirty memory of a handjob he gave Patrick once because he thrives on the way Patrick’s thoughts get all jumbled when he has a boner. “His dog that’s totally named after you. You two are so predictable I can’t even believe it.”

Patrick wants to tell Erica that she doesn’t even know the meaning of predictable, since she isn’t inside another person’s head practically all of the time now, but he bites it back. Johnny reminds him that he still hasn’t told Erica that he hates Donovan. He ignores that. “He’s not my—” and _Don’t even_ shoots through his mind so quickly that he almost says it out loud. “I’m not going to keep him here long.”

“I don’t mind,” Erica says. “At least you waited until I was back from the honeymoon so his dog didn’t go crazy on his own.”

“He could’ve left Kaner with his parents,” Johnny tells him to say. “You just live closer.”

Erica laughs at him. “You sound so enamored, Pat.”

Johnny sends him a rapid-fire train of memories of Patrick’s smile whenever they’ve been overly gay with each other in the past to quell the denial in the back of Patrick’s mind. “Maybe so,” Patrick says after mentally kicking Johnny in the shin and telling him to trust him, “but I’m not married yet. Loser.”

Erica hangs up on him after threatening to keep Kaner for good if Johnny isn’t home in four days. Johnny’s thoughts on the matter are layered and Patrick can’t see all of them for the sheer number that are there—Johnny brushes it off by saying he has to get back to work by Tuesday anyway.

 _Am I going to get to hang out with your dog or are you going to try and keep me all to yourself?_ Johnny shoots at him, which earns him back a bunch of images of Patrick locking the door to his bedroom.

_Ten minutes with Tazer and then we’re going ice skating._

_It’s May._ Johnny also sends along an image of the sun shining brightly outside of the plane’s window.

 _This is Buffalo, dude_. But that only earns him a bunch of question marks in different colors and then a projected image of how the water cycle works—and how snow doesn’t form in this kind of weather. Patrick sighs and sends Johnny a picture of the year-round indoor ice rink.

 _Why though?_ Johnny asks, which earns him a slew of images of the two of them skating together during hockey games, of pulling each other up from tumbles, of the times they stayed late after practice and looped figure-eights around each other until they felt sick to their stomachs with feelings and didn't talk about it.

/

Considering all the mental build-up, the fact that Johnny doesn’t go straight in for a kiss when Patrick picks him up from the airport is kind of disappointing. At the same time though—people, and being able to hear inside his head that Johnny’s dying to do it anyway is kind of good enough. The inside of his mind is so colorful when he sees Patrick at baggage claim—vibrant and wild enough that it really almost floors Patrick until he realizes he’s capable of reciprocating in shapes and colors just as bright.

Tazer almost completely disregards Johnny when they come in the door, looking at him once before trusting him and pawing at the couch for Patrick to sit down. There’s no Sabres game tonight, but the jersey’s on him anyway, and Patrick admits mentally that he thought it might be cute. Johnny gives him grief about Sabres for about half a second before a swarm of embarrassing Jets losses get recalled into his mind via Patrick.

“Cheap shot,” Johnny mutters, watching Patrick jump onto the couch. Tazer practically falls on top of him instantly, like it’s a ritual and Johnny’s interrupting.

“You’re not interrupting, asshole,” Patrick says, patting the space on the couch that’s still open next to him. “Sit down and pet my dog so he knows you love him. You have to be pretty explicit about it with Tazer.”

The dig isn’t lost on Johnny, especially because Patrick reinforces it by psychically nudging the thought around in his head and grinning a bunch. “Yeah, fine. But it’s getting late so if you actually wanted to go ice skating…” _and get dinner_ plays through both their minds, so Johnny doesn’t even know why he trails off out loud.

“Relax,” Patrick says, and Johnny feels himself do so. “Pet my dog. Maybe it’ll strengthen our wacky brain-bond.”

 _Still not buying that the dogs are behind that_ , Johnny thinks, but he goes over to the couch and has a seat anyway. Patrick’s arm curls its way around him and keeps him close as Tazer licks at Johnny’s fingers, sending pulses of joy and pictures of Johnny and Kaner into the air. “I’m glad I’m here,” Johnny says, and Patrick knows there’s no hiding that it’s the truth.

/

Ice skating is much better than the wedding. It’s dark by the time they go, and no one stops them for autographs as they lace up and Johnny double-checks his leg out of habit, even though he’s skated with the kids at the rec center back home before. Patrick winces a few times in his stead, and Johnny’s more aware of his wrist than he usually is, but with that behind them they hit the ice.

At least four people take video of them spinning sideways around each other, but neither of them really care. These people know their legacy—and that’s what it’s always been about, hockey.

 _I wanna push you up against the side of this rink and kiss you_ goes a bit too far, so they settle for being a bit more hands-on than usual. Not that it doesn’t prove useful at one point, when Johnny plants his bad leg down too hard and Patrick almost reels over, but Johnny’s hand is too tight on his for him to fall.

They don’t take dinner seriously at all. Johnny narrows it down to Patrick’s influence, but he finds himself ditching his still-imposed calorie regimens and they end up sharing too many mozzarella sticks before burgers and fries even come their way. It’s hot out even in the night, and before Johnny can protest Patrick’s gotten them milkshakes as well.

Tazer makes himself scarce when they stumble back to Patrick’s, not drunk but distracted by interesting fingers and the too-noticeable synchronized pounding inside of their heads. _We’re gonna?_ is all Johnny asks before Patrick has him pulled into the bedroom and silenced. Not mentally, of course, because it wouldn’t be possible to quell the joy springing free of both of them. But mouths on other mouths prove a viable tactic of escaping any tricky words when their thoughts can say so much more.

It’s nothing like any time before when Johnny pushes Patrick onto the bed and grips his forearms tight—because this time their minds tell him to. They strip each other in choreographed motions. There are teeth at one of their necks and it’s hard to tell through the slew of thoughts what belongs to who anymore.

And then the bond doesn’t go blank, but it relaxes. Like waves that had been vibrating just barely out of sync but then were tied together and eclipsing each other. Everything in their heads clears and the only things that matter are the thoughts that have to deal with the right here and now—nagging doubts in the backs of minds and unrelated reminders of things past vanish completely.

Johnny’s on top, and his mouth trails its way down Patrick’s chest with expertise, guided by the invisible hand of Patrick’s thoughts, getting to feel the way Patrick reacts to everything—which inches of his skin feel more tantalized than others and where his hands need to roam to.

“Perfect,” Patrick gets out, and then Johnny is at his crotch, working him first with a hand and then his mouth. Patrick thrusts up in alternation with Johnny bobbing down and it’s all so well timed that he barely notices that he’s fast-approaching the critical juncture of when Johnny would have to pull off to stop Patrick from coming too early.

Johnny does notice though, and he moves off Patrick’s cock and down to his balls in order to hold off on some of the relief. _Do you wanna…_ the thought completes itself in images instead of words.

 _Yeah. Uh—_ and Patrick can’t exactly think straight, so he instead digs for a memory of where he hides his lube and condoms for Johnny to find. Johnny does find them, because Patrick’s memory is more helpful than he is, and then there’s Patrick’s legs anchored around Johnny’s waist and way too much heavy breathing. _You’re gonna need to_ —images of previous times Johnny’s shoved his dick into Patrick, and the stretching proceeding that— _because it’s been a while._

Johnny’s blushing— _Sorry about that_ —and then he’s slicking his fingers up and backing slightly away from Patrick for a better angle. Patrick’s tight but also helpful, so Johnny manages to get two fingers in easily before he has to stop and let the waves of pleasure that Patrick’s emitting wash over him. _It’s hard to concentrate when I can feel what you feel_ , he throws out, which just earns him a grin from Patrick and stronger feelings.

He gets the third finger in through a break in the onslaught of Patrick’s overbearing joy and by that point he’s ready for all of the euphoria Patrick can throw at him, since he’s feeling it too.

 _Just go ahead_ , Patrick sends him, and Johnny nods because he could feel Patrick’s readiness as well. He pulls his fingers out and gets the condom on after Patrick has to open the package with non-slippery fingers. He pushes in hard at first, waiting until the moment he feels Patrick tense up even the slightest amount before backing off. It’s easy enough to get inside him, and there’s pressure building up in his groin that keeps getting tighter the further he pushes in.

 _We’re both close_ , Johnny communicates, and Patrick’s nodding and gasping feverishly. Johnny wraps his hand around Patrick’s dick and starts pumping when he gets fully inside, timing his own thrusts with the pumps and their heartbeats. He feels like everything’s perfect— _It is_ —and that there’s nothing stopping him here and now, pressed into Patrick with everything he’s got and swarmed by thoughts that are sometimes just pure elation instead of reasoning.

They probably would’ve been disappointed if they didn’t come simultaneously.

And then there’s the aftermath, and dirty sheets with Johnny pulling out and falling next to him, curling up into Patrick’s side, and—

“Come back to Winnipeg with me,” Johnny whispers.

Patrick sees all of it unfold right in front of him—the plane ride back, the lawn in front of Johnny’s house, Erica driving circles in the Winnipeg nights, roads all stretched out on a map inside his brain, pieces of color that seem to burst from their skin when they touch. And all of it, everything from the blades of grass left behind in Buffalo to the street signs of Winnipeg and the building of bigger doghouses with room enough for two, points to Johnny.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] chicago is so two years ago](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1467169) by [AshesandGhost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AshesandGhost/pseuds/AshesandGhost)




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